What Doesn't Kill You
by Ellipsis the Great
Summary: Why did you do this to me instead of just killing me like you did the others?”“Would it make you feel better if there was a reason, Jackie boy? If it was part of some grand plan of mine? Come on, Jack. Do I look like someone who has a plan?" Joker-centric


_**What Doesn't Kill You**_

_A one-shot by Ellipsis the Great_

_**Summary: **"Why didn't you kill me? Why did you do this to me instead of just killing me like you did the others?" "Would it make you feel better if there was a reason, Jackie boy? If it was part of some grand plan of mine? Come on, Jack. You're a smart kid, arencha? Do I look like someone who has a plan?" Joker-centric._

_**Disclaimer:** The Joker belongs to Bob Kane, DC Comics, and Warner Brothers. All I own is the plot!_

_**Rated:** T, just in case._

_"True strength of mind divided you from the just out for themselves. Cos you broke away; but you knew, you know it ain't about this time or this place, and self importance had almost destroyed what you had achieved. I know it was hard, but you just had to break free. Does it always have to be that greed builds our dreams and seems to be the drive behind so many human beings? It's so sad that we've had so much potential, many chances…so much good we've turned to bad…" –Capdown, 'What Doesn't Kill You'_

Jack sat in a corner of the room, shaking and looking anywhere but at the man standing over him.

"What's your name, kiddo?"

"J-Jack." He was shaking, keeping his eyes on the floor.

He gasped as a knife was pressed against his throat, forcing his face up. "Now why the long face, Jackie boy?"

His dark brown eyes were wide with fear, but his vision was becoming blurred by his tears. Because of this, he couldn't make out the man standing over him.

"P-please don't kill me, mister." He whimpered.

"And why would I go and do a nasty thing like that?" The man asked with a saccharine sweet voice—too sweet to be comforting. "Look at me, Jackie! Do I look like a man who could kill an innocent little boy like you?"

He didn't answer, choking back the sobs that were wracking his body and causing the knife to make a small cut in the skin of his neck. The tiny sting of pain was intensified by his adrenaline-crazed mind, and he cried out, pressing himself farther into the wall he was being pushed up against.

"Aww, don't worry, Jackie." The man sneered, pulling the knife away and smearing the blood away from the wound. "I'm not gonna kill you."

"Y-you aren't?" He whispered, letting hope color his voice in spite of himself.

"No, of course not!" The knife moved up suddenly, pressing against the corner of Jack's mouth and causing him to begin shaking again as the cold metal touched his skin. "At least, I'm not gonna kill you all the way. If you survive, well…"

The man leaned in closer, his hot, stinking breath invading Jack's flaring nose.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?"

(PAGEBREAK)

Jack sat numbly in the hospital bed, staring down at his hands with blank brown eyes, void of fear and any other emotion. There were bandages over the sides of his mouth, which still stung with the icy cold metal that had driven them apart and laughed; with the laughter that had almost overshadowed his screams; with the screams that had split his face even farther apart.

"Jack? Jack, baby, talk to me." His mother's hand was warm on his icy cold back. He drooped forward a little with the weight of it. "Come on, sweetie, talk to mommy."

Jack stared.

"Jack, you're being silly. You have to tell the nice police officer who did this to you." His father said, soothingly and sternly at the same time.

Jack stared.

"Jack," this third voice was soft, gentle. "If you don't tell me something this guy's going to walk free. You don't want that, do you? Don't you want us to catch him?"

Jack stared.

"Tell us a hint. A name, a face? Anything, Jackie boy." His father said.

Jack stopped staring. Instead, he breathed in. And the more he breathed, the faster his breathing became. His eyes were going wide again. Wide, wide, wide like his mouth as the bandages pulled at his ear-to-ear grin.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." He mumbled, his voice scratchy with misuse but growing stronger with each word he spoke. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! _What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, Jackie boy!_ _WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER!_"

He screamed—screamed and screamed and screamed, at first with anger and then with fear and then with pain as his cries broke through the bandages and stitches and scabs. Blood spewed all over.

But not as much blood, he was sure, as there had been when it was the knife doing the slicing instead of just his screams.

(PAGEBREAK)

Jack sat in the back of his classroom, eyes on the blank sheet of paper in front of him.

"Why so serious, Jack?"

His eyes slid up, away from the paper and onto the face of his teacher as she sat beside him. She smiled at him. He would have smiled back at her, but it didn't matter. He was always smiling, now. When she didn't say anything else, he looked back down at his paper.

"Come on, Jack." She said. "You can't stay like this forever. If you do, you're just letting that guy win. You have to keep living or else he's gotten exactly what he wanted."

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." He whispered, not looking at her this time.

"Exactly." She didn't understand what he was saying. And she was too cheerful. _Too cheerful_. "Now get up, Mr. Grumpypants. Let's go outside and play with the other kids, okay?"

He shook his head once, then let it drop forward on his desk with a small thump.

His teacher sighed and ruffled his hair. "Alright, alright, I'll leave you alone. But Jack, would you do me a little favor?"

He grunted.

"Smile more."

She set something on the table, so soft he barely heard it clink as it touched the hardwood. Then she left, not waiting for an answer.

He lifted his head slowly.

Sitting just a few inches away from him, with a painted face and colored hair, sat the small china bust of a clown situated on a tiny platform which read: 'Always smile.'

(PAGEBREAK)

Jack sat in front of the bathroom mirror, staring down at the clown bust on the counter. He let his gaze wander away from it, to the makeup bag his mother had left sitting beside the sink and then up to the mirror. The scars were hidden, sort of, just barely, by some sort of makeup his mother had bought. Not the same kind that was in the bab. That was her special makeup. The kind she wore when she and his father went on a date.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." He said softly to the image in the mirror. He reached up and traced the reflection's barely hidden scars. Then he reached for the makeup bag, slowly, with the odd rush of adrenaline that came with the thought of his mother bursting in and catching him, even though she was gone.

Sifting through the bag a little, he came up with a tube of lipstick, the clear cap allowing the bright red color to shine through. He pulled the lid off and spun the base so that more lipstick showed and looked back at the mirror, tracing the scars with a slightly shaking hand.

He stood looking at the mirror as his hand dropped, the lipstick clattering to the floor.

"Now I'll always be smiling." He whispered to no one. Then, with a small cry of rage he threw the bust into the mirror, shattering both.

(PAGEBREAK)

Jack sat in the courtroom, staring at the man sitting across the room, a blank expression on his face.

"We find the defendant guilty of thirteen counts of murder, eight counts of sexual deviancy, six counts of aggravated assault, one count of kidnapping, and one count of first degree assault." The jury foreman said. "We ask for the maximum penalty—death."

The judge nodded, turning to the man and announcing his sentence. The death penalty.

Then the judge asked for the family members of the victims to be allowed to speak; final words to the defendant to bring closure.

Jack, as the only survivor, was the last to speak.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to, Jack." His mother told him as he stood and walked away from her.

"I have a question." He rasped into the microphone, casting the judge a curious glance.

The judge nodded his approval, and Jack looked at the man.

"Why didn't you kill me?" He asked, his voice shaking. "Why did you do this to me instead of just killing me like you did the others?"

"Would it make you feel better if there was a reason, Jackie boy?" The man giggled, causing angry whispers to ripple through the crowd. "If it was part of some grand plan of mine?" The man clicked his tongue, shaking his head disappointedly. "Come on, Jack. You're a smart kid, arencha? Do I look like someone who has a plan?"

"There has to be a reason." Jack said, voice shaking with desperation.

The man cackled. "No reason, Jackie boy. None! I just wanted to hear you _scream_!" The man let out a sharp scream, dissolving into high-pitched, squealing laughter before the scream could completely fade away.

"Take him away!" The judge roared, banging his gavel loudly to break through the cacophonous noise that had taken over the courtroom.

"I just wanted to inject the world with a little chaos!" The man guffawed, doubled over with laughter even as the officers dragged him away.

Jack wept.

(PAGEBREAK)

Jack sat deep in the woods behind his house, staring down at his bloody hands.

The first kill, he decided, had been the hardest and the easiest. It was the hardest because he had never killed before—didn't know how to do it, how to take it. It was the easiest because he was too curious to back away like he might later, when he'd had time to think it over.

Then he sighed and wiped his hands on his mother's nice blouse. He hadn't felt as much during the second kill, though. Nothing like he had for the first.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." He commented to his father's body. "Guess you guys were too weak to survive."

And the third kill…well, he had been numb by then. But maybe if he had spaced them out more…or maybe if he had done them all at once…

As he turned to walk away, his teacher's still screaming mouth caught his attention.

He walked over to her, newly cleaned knife in hand, and crouched over her. He put his free hand on her face, turning it over and holding it still while he put the knife in her mouth.

"Let's put a smile on that face."

The End…?


End file.
